Canadian Ethnic Media Association

By Ben Viccari

Our newly created and fine looking web site, designed by Bill Andersen of Ripple Effect gets more than a bright new look and new URL to go along with our change of name to CEMA.

We are indeed fortunate to have as web master and a member of our Board of Directors, the volunteer services of longtime CEMA member Zuhair Kash Kashmeri who has not only managed sites before but does so backed by a brilliant career in journalism, including Internet journalism and publishing.

Born in Bombay, Kash began his writing career as a reporter at the Indian Express and freelanced for the Associated Press of America. On coming to Canada, he joined the staff of the Globe and Mail, covering sectors as diverse as Islam and the Middle East (he did the first major North American interview with Yasser Arafat and all his commanders for a series called “Inside the PLO:), Justice, Human Rights and Business, Financeand International Trade. For several years, he reviewed books for the Globe on the Middle East and Islam. He also served as foreign business editor with the Globe’s Report on Business and covered the Waste Management and Transportation sectors for ROB.

Moving to Toronto’s alternative weekly, NOW, Kash spent three years as senior news editor with the mandate to bring on board ethnic writers and as feature writer. He then, produced radio documentaries for CBCs flagship show Sunday Morning and worked in TV as one of the producers of ‘Face Off’ with Judy Rebick and Claire Hoy on CBC Newsworld. He participated for many years in Vision TVs weekly media show.

In 1998, he successfully crossed over to the Internet and helped establish the first e-business daily in the world, ebizChroinicle.com, which he co-founded in New York and ran it as its Chief Editor. The online paper was sold in 2004.

Simultaneously, he decided to take a break from daily journalism,and transitionedsuccessfully into business research, becoming Chief Research Editor with National Bank Financial, one of the largest brokerages in Canada.This break also helped him return to his favourite forms of writing: short stories, poetry and sketches, and writing occasional articles. He continues with one journalistic stint that he began in 1997: doing regular on-air commentaries for OMNI-TV.

He is the author of two books, The Gulf Within: Canadian Arabs, Racism and the Gulf War, and Soft Target (1989 and 2005 [2nd Ed.] both published by James Lorimer and Co.). He produced a one-hoursegment on The Gulf Within for CBC Radio’s Ideas show.He is currently translating from Urdu/Hindi to English the published autobiography of his father, the late Agha Jani Kashmeri, one of the most famous screenplay writers in Bollywood from the 1920s to the late 1960s, who wrote about 50 movies over six generations, retirning and dying in Canada in 1998.

Kash is also producing and writing a one-hour documentary for OMNI-TV on his dad, scheduled for completion by February 2011. His production team includes and well-known broadcaster and documentary maker Howard Bernstein as co-producer and co-writer with Kash, Lani Sellick as director. Kash will narrate and appear in the documentary. The documentary will trace his father from his birthplace in Lucknow, India, which produced the best Urdu/Hindi poets and writers, to Bombay, the home of Bollywood, and to Canada, where his father was involved with the Urdu Society of Canada, and took part in several forums.

Kash grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai) and studied at the Jesuit-run St. Xavier’s High School, after which he studied English literature at Bombay University. In Canada, he took courses in Law, Business and Economics at the University of Western Ontario, and has two diplomas in Journalism, one from the Siddhartha College of Journalism, then affiliated with Bombay University, and another from the London School of Journalism. In his spare time, he enjoys fly fishing, squash and bicycling.

Photograph: Ben Viccari